The gathering, processing, and use of data and statistics are an important aspect of the business, analysis and appreciation of sports. Amateur and professional teams, coaches, and fans record and evaluate data and statistics for comparing the performance of teams and individual athletes. Teams, coaches, scouts, agents, and fans also review data, video, and statistics to analyze athletic performance and ability thereby enhancing the appreciation of the player's athletic accomplishments. Teams and coaches use data, video, and statistics to evaluate present and potential athletes, and their performances. They also plan game strategies based upon opponents' athletic abilities and performance data and statistics.
Advancements in technology and computerized data processing have developed modeling software, applications, and websites which, with the input of detailed statistical data, may track and/or predict the sequence of interactions forming a virtual sporting event from actual sporting events and essentially produce an artificial or simulated athletic competition.
The term “Fantasy Sports” has been used to identify the process of using sports modeling software, applications and statistical data to virtually assemble teams of selected athletes and operate the computer to predict the sequence of interactions forming an athletic competition between fans and their teams. Computer modeling of sports events has become a popular leisure and fan activity which has evolved into an important commercial sector of the sports business.
Potential player scouting and drafting continues to be a critical component of a team's future. College and professional sports invest great resources, time and money into reviewing prospective athletes. The scouts obtain and evaluate the athlete's capabilities, including speed, movement, skills, and agility. In addition to the player's previous game history, professional sports invest in major events such as the National Football League (NFL) Combine, “Pro Days” and private practices as a means for evaluating specific players and potential performance. Other information is gathered via review of countless hours of game video, player data and statistics, and the like.
The prior art methods for collecting sports data, performance metrics, and creating statistics have their drawbacks. For example, much of the data is entered manually. Also, non-real-time video review for purposes of collecting and analyzing performance data is not efficient. Subjective and measured information is gathered via review of countless hours of game video, player data and statistics, and the like. Acquiring objective and quantifying sports RTLS/RTSS performance metrics, data and statistics of a player's game, practice, training and/or sporting event performances from High School, College, through the professional level is a very important and valuable asset for the player, teams, coaches, team owner, fans, sports telecasts and the sports industry as a whole.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a more efficient system and method for gathering comprehensive sports data in real-time and in automated fashion.
The present invention solves the problems in the prior art by enabling the real-time acquisition, recording, transmittal, and processing of actual game, practice, training and/or sporting event sports performance metrics, tracking, location, speed, impact and data from sports players, field and sports objects (balls, bats, equipment, etc.), game officials (referees) and the “Field of Play” using, for example, RTLS/RTSS telemetry with RF technology and video technology, which may be used to superimpose acquired performance metrics and data on video, for example.